Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (33 page)

“No
, Your Majesty,” Bridget croaked, unnerved by his anger. “My presence here has nothing to do with Lady Exeter, whom you have already extended great compassion towards. It is not for her sake but for the sake of my aunt, Mistress Joan De Brett that I have come hither. Information has been communicated to me, very disturbing information, that has caused me to fear for her safety. To be blunt, sire, I have heard that she is to be arrested. For what reason, I know not. What I do know is that she is a faithful subject unto Your Majesty and always has been. She would never involve herself in any enterprise that would threaten Your Majesty in any way. If I could be allowed leave from court in order to see her and discover the truth of all this, I am sure this matter could be very easily resolved. To that end, sire, I ask—”

The king held up his hand for silence
, and Bridget instantly complied. He strode across to the chamber door, wrenched it open, and beckoned outwards. The block-like figure of Thomas Cromwell soon filled the doorway, his arrival sucking the atmosphere out of the chamber and replacing it with his own, as was his habit. He nodded to Bridget and smiled, showing her two rows of even, white teeth.

“Lord Cromwell
,” the king said, “you are the right man to ask about this matter. The Viscountess de Brett is here on serious business pertaining to her aunt, Mistress Joan. Are you familiar with that lady?” Cromwell confirmed that he was. “Good. It seems that Lady de Brett is under the impression that the said Mistress Joan is to be arrested. Do you know anything of this? Is it true?”

Cromwell’s eyes swivelled between the king and
Bridget, and his mouth fell open in a perfect oval of surprise. “Arrest? Mistress Joan? Why no, sire, nothing could be further from the truth. I am a great admirer of that lady; she is a true and loyal subject who performs stalwart charity work for the poor and indigent of London. She is an exemplar of a Christian woman one might say but –“he paused. “It is this compassionate spirit of hers that has caused her to become the victim of the most odious of betrayals. I was going to bring this matter to your attention later today, Majesty, but it seems that Lady de Brett’s arrival here has pre-empted me. Her intelligence network must be superior to mine.”

He drew out a letter from an inside pocket of his gown and handed it across to the king. Henry scanned it quickly and, with his mouth formed into a hard line of anger,
he passed it to Bridget. She had expected to be presented with the beautiful, fluent hand of the abbess and she steeled herself to show no reaction to it. But she was met with no such thing. Instead of the abbess’s hand, she was faced with the spidery scrawl of Sister Margaret, her writing grown so cramped and irregular with age that it was now rendered almost indecipherable. Almost, but not quite. The opening line of the missive was clearly, horribly legible: it read “My Lady Exeter” in sharp, bold script. The blood in Bridget’s head roared, and she fought to hold the page steady. She did not need to read any more. With those three, deceptively simple words she knew that Sister Margaret, and possibly the abbess as well, had lied to her. She knew that Sister Margaret in her desperation, her anger and her grief at the end of the only life she had ever known, the conventual life, had probably committed treason. And, for that she knew, above all, that Sister Margaret was a dead woman.

“This letter is signed ‘Mistress Margaret
Welles.’ Who is this person to you? Is she a relative?” the king demanded.

Bri
dget drove her nails into her palms, using the little burst of pain to gather her courage and focus her mind. Sister Margaret was beyond her help; she was beyond anyone’s help. She had dug her own grave. But what of the abbess? Was she in peril? Bridget could still save her, and that was all that mattered.

She lifted her eyes,
looked straight at the king with equanimity and answered, “No, sire. This woman, Mistress Margaret Welles, is no relation of mine, nor is she related to Lord de Brett. Mistress Joan took her in as an act of kindness, as she was a nun at Rivers Abbey. She is not a young woman, and once the abbey was suppressed, she found herself alone in the world without family. Clearly, as Lord Cromwell said, Mistress Joan’s act of Christian charity has been betrayed. I can promise you, sire, that none of us were aware of Mistress Welles’s correspondence. None of us were aware of—this.” She looked sadly down at the single sheet of parchment and hastily blinked back tears.

The king regarded her speculatively
. He turned to his chief minister. “Cromwell? What say you? Is Mistress Joan de Brett an innocent party in all this? Was her good nature used against her? This Welles woman wrote to Lady Exeter. Was any of the correspondence found amongst her belongings after the marchioness’s arrest?”

Lord Cromwell pursed his lips in an oddly matronly fashion and replied smoothly
, “No, Your Majesty, nothing was found from Margaret Welles amongst the effects of the marchioness. I came by this letter by other means. As for the innocence of Mistress Joan, I believe Lady de Brett is entirely correct. I have conducted a thorough investigation and I can say, with utter certainty, that Mistress Joan played no part in the treasonable doings of the Welles female. Mistress Margaret, as my investigation uncovered, has been a keen letter writer in support of the claims of the White Rose, in particular those of Cardinal Pole. And that is not all. I have testimony that she has spoken openly against Your Majesty several times to whomsoever will listen to her. The ‘mouldwarp’ prophecy is a particular favourite of hers, I am told.”

The kings eyes bulged and he went a dark shade of red. “The mouldwarp? Hang her up then! God almighty, is there no end to these traitors and the lengths they will go to destroy me? Am I never to be safe from them? Is my son never to be safe?”
The king slumped into a cushioned chair and leant forward, his hands on his knees.

“Majesty, of course you will be saf
e . . . you
are
safe,” Bridget soothed, covering the king’s hands with her own. “You are the king, consecrated unto God. There is no earthly force that can undo that.”

“I am the king
,” he agreed, his voice so low it was barely more than a hiss, “and you would do well to remember that, madam. You now stand in a very difficult position. Your aunt has harboured a traitor in her midst, within the walls of your husband’s house no less. The house that he never visits any longer because he is kept so busy on his other estates. Estates that I gave to him. Because of you. Because I wanted you and you have pleased me, at least for a time, though your affection, dearly bought, proved barren.” He glanced at her flat belly. “Never forget that everything I have bestowed, everything that I have given you, it can all be taken away,” he clicked his fingers, “like they never were. That was a truth that the previous wearer of this pendant never fully realised, not until the sword sliced through her neck. One of the privileges of a king is that I can make things disappear. Honours. Lands. People. All can vanish,” he smiled nastily, “in an instant.”

Bridget could hear the roaring increase in her
brain and was sure that she was about to faint on the spot, but somehow she centred herself. She smiled and inclined her head as if to indicate that she understood. The king, satisfied that he had made his point, gave her hand a hard squeeze and stood up.

“My lady, you asked permission to leave court for a time. That permission is granted. I think it best tha
t you repair to the Manor of Thorns and see to your household. You shall remain there until I see fit to summon you. I assume that Lord de Brett has been informed of the arrest of Mistress Welles?” Cromwell nodded. “Good, no doubt he is making his way back to London as we speak. He is a . . . practical man, and I have no doubt that he will set his house in order.”

“Thank you
, Your Majesty,” Bridget said in what she hoped was a suitably biddable tone. “You are most kind.”

The king held out his hand
, and she duly dropped into a curtsey and kissed the extended ruby ring. The king then withdrew and dismissed her with a finality that was unmistakable. Bridget turned for the door and nearly bolted out of it. She exited through the outer chambers, past the rows and rows of curious stares that included even the habitually stony-faced guards, their sharp-edged halberds turned blessedly away from her. She assumed an air of calm indifference, but once she was past them, out into the passageway and around the first corner, she sagged against the cool stone walls and waited for her galloping heart rate to slow back down to normal. If anything could be termed “normal” now.

She cried out in frustration and
slapped her palm several times against the wall. The shock of the impact reverberated up and down her arm but she welcomed it. Bridget could not remember ever being so angry. She wanted to tear the palace to pieces, brick by brick, such was her fury. She wanted to rip down every tapestry, turn over every table and chair, and shatter every pane of glass. She wanted to run out into the courtyard and scream and scream until she was hoarse and her throat bled. But she knew that she could not and besides whatever she did, it would be useless. Futile. Sister Margaret was going to die. She could not stop it. The abbess would be destroyed by grief. She would never forgive herself. In addition to that, the king had made it very clear that they might lose their home and their lands. They could be stripped of it all, and she, who had sacrificed the most, would be left with nothing. “Oh, Holy Mother, forgive me,” she muttered dejectedly. “I have debased myself, I have lost my honour, my good name, and for what? I am the king’s whore. I am a sinner. I am a failure. I have failed you. I have failed everyone.”

“Oh
, I would not say that,” Lord Cromwell remarked, emerging into the corridor like an emissary of doom. “You have not failed at everything. You succeeded in pleasing your king. True, he grows weary of you now, as he eventually does all women, but for a time you pleased him. Greatly. More importantly than that, he still holds you in esteem. He has told me so many times—he told me so again just now. You have never gossiped about him, you have never laughed at him or spread ugly rumours about him, as others before you have done. You have shown discretion and kept your own counsel. Therefore, once His Majesty is married to Anne of Cleves, and I thank you for your support of that match, as a reward you shall have a place in her household. All in all that constitutes a very good return for . . . what did you call it? Your debasement of honour?”

Bridget barely listened to
his words; she had had enough of listening to them. They had availed her nothing. Instead, she walked up to him until their faces were mere inches apart. For once she felt no fear; her anger had swallowed it up. She longed to slap him so much that her palm tingled in keen anticipation of the blow.

“Careful
, madam,” Cromwell warned. “Think before you act. I am prepared to make allowances for the fact that you are . . . upset, but do not forget yourself too far. The consequences could be dire.”

“Dire consequences?” Bridget laughed
. “Well, I suppose you are the man to ask about those. You are, after all, the master of them. Let us contemplate your list of victims so far, shall we, my lord? It is quite distinguished. You have helped to send all manner of people to the headsman: Bishop Fisher, Thomas More, Mark Smeaton, the Queen of England, the Marquess of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville and now you can add a harmless, old nun to the tally. Tell me, will you attend her execution as you attended so many of the others? We did so enjoy your rather strikingly detailed descriptions of the final moments of Exeter and his cohorts last Christmas. It really added most wonderfully to the season of goodwill unto all men.”

“I am glad to hear you appreciated it
, madam, though you seem to have completely missed the point of my relaying their last sorry moments of life to the court. The penalty for treason is death, a bloody end upon the block, the heads afterwards placed on spikes as a warning to others. Those men
were
traitors, as were all the others you mentioned. They were deservedly punished according to the law. That is how we go about protecting the realm, how we protect the king. It is immaterial that Margaret Welles is an old woman. She has committed treason. She must now pay the penalty for it.”

Bridget knew he was right
, though every fibre of her being hated him for it. Sister Margaret had committed treason, according to the law, but even so she could not just let her die. She had to at least try to save her life.

“Do you remember that we had an agreement
, my lord?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Then you must also remember the terms of that agreement, since they were your idea. I agreed to yield myself to the king and to promote the alliance with Cleves, indeed to promote all your causes. In return, you agreed to guarantee my family’s safety.”

“Mistress
Welles is not one of your family.”

“She is of my
household; she has lived at Thorns, and before that at Rivers alongside myself and my aunt Joan de Brett, who is one of my family. She is like kin to me; I have known her all my life. Please . . . Thomas. I beg you. Do not do this. You can spare her. I know you can.”

Cromwell wavered a little at the use of his name, which she had never employed before. A
fast pulse beat in the side of his temple. He inhaled deeply.

“
I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot spare her. Mistress Welles is a traitor, and she is no kin to you. The best I can do is spare her the full rigours of a traitor’s death. As far as your true kin is concerned, namely Mistress Joan, I honoured our accord. You do realise that I could have had her arrested too? She sheltered Mistress Welles, she is close to her, and I am sure they talked often on a great many subjects. They have a liking for contentious banners; perhaps she also dipped her pen in treasonous ink? I could so easily have had her put to the question, shaken her up and seen what fell out. I chose not to do so. I kept my word. Which, madam, is more than I can say for you.”